Visitors!

pretty flowers mom and dad brought

Mom and Dad are here visiting for a week.  We are excited to have them.  Hannah is always a good sport when someone comes to stay and gives up her room.
Everyone was looking forward to the visit.  They arrived last night and we had a nice dinner and FHE together. It's great to have multi-generation family nights. I really enjoy having them here and having them share their ideas and thoughts and testimony with the kids.

 playing dicecapades after the lesson

Mom teaching Grace a Russian tongue twister

Today after everyone went to school we had a full day planned. I am making these cute owl pillowcases for the new beehives at New Beginnings tomorrow night so Mom helped me with those and they turned out super cute.

I am also making a tee shirt quilt for Ethan for his Eagle.  I have been saving shirts since he was about 3 and mom and I laid them out and started planning that. I am glad to have her here to help because she is a way better seamstress/quilter than I. And it's fun to work together.

Dad and I walked the dog.

We all went to the HS to drop off Ethan's forgotten tennis racket. Then we went to lunch at Cafe Rio with several old friends of mom's. I always love to go to lunch!

When we got home I took Hannah for her wisdom teeth consult, she's having them removed in March.  Grace had choir and Ethan had tennis.  When everyone was home we had a yummy dinner and then Mom and Dad went to visit Chuck Degner in the hospital, and Daisy (Mom's BFF).

It was a full day.

things that annoy

One thing that is so frustrating to me is the kids homework habits.  This picture was taken at 10pm on Sunday night.  Obviously the best time to work on homework.  I HATE when the kids put it off to the last minute, when it's time for bed.  This weekend it was difficult to find time earlier (as are MANY weekends).  Friday was Grace's birthday and party, Saturday we did chores in the morning and then went sledding.  She could have worked on it in the evening.  Sunday we went to church and then she watched "just add magic" all afternoon, a cute show about 3 girls who find a magic cookbook.  All the while ignoring her homework.  Then at 8;30 she "remember" that she had homework, even though she was asked about it earlier and answered no she didn't have any. Grace is not the only one guilty of this behavior, she just happened to be last night's perpetrator. It makes me really annoyed. 

In their defense they get very good grades and are excellent student but that's not really the point.  It is a matter of priority: doing the important tasks first and then relaxing is the right order, and a good habit and someday it will be important.

This morning I went in the laundry room and Steve was there looking for a spot in his box to do his business.  There was not room.  I was mad because Grace is supposed to clean the box every.day. So even though it was only 5:15, and even though I knew she was up too late last night, I woke her up and made her go clean it.  I have also been known to get kids out of bed to finish putting their dirty clothes in the hamper, unload a dishwasher or clean up a random mess. It's mean but I don't really care.  Perhaps sometime this will pay off and they will pick up after themselves without reminders.

Lately I've been frustrated with poor work performance.  When the kids set the table they leave off the napkins, or they don't put the plate near the edge of the table (instead they flop them in the middleish), or other careless mistakes.  I feel really insulted by this, If I am making the effort of preparing a nice meal and I value the time we spend at the table eating and talking together and I model what it's like to make a pleasing and inviting table setting why do they not care to do their part nicely when it's their turn?

Other things: not replacing an empty roll of TP with a fresh one...why?

leaving empty milk bottles in the fridge? come on!

taking off their shoes and socks and leaving them where they sit!

stacking clean clothes on top of the dresser instead of in the drawer...and then it gets knocked onto the floor....and then they "clean their room" and pick it up and put it back in the hamper. ...makes me scream on the inside!

driving home from somewhere and then getting out of the car and 1) leaving everything in the car to be cleaned out later or 2) bringing some stuff inside, barely, like just passed the threshold of the home, and dropping it to be cleaned up later (or kicked across the room by a passing sibling)

If I am gone and then come home and I know where everyone sat, what they ate, what they did etc. by just looking around that is super annoying.  I should not know how many soda's Ethan drank by counting the cans lined up on his window sill.

I know I am not alone in these frustrations, and probably the kids will turn out fine but it makes for a lot of silently counting to 10, 50, 100 in my head, and a lot of "MEAN MOM" moments.  

"Why are you so salty mom? I get asked.

"hmm?!?!?"

sunday

so cute! I love seeing pictures from years ago.  Ethan and Grace were so little and so cute.  They were best friends for a long time and played together all the time.  Now they don't get along as well but hopefully some day it will swing back to the sweet big brother/ little sister friendship that they had.

Ethan gave a talk in church today.   I helped him write it but he gave it and he did a good job.

My good friend Diann has been going thru breast cancer treatment.  She finished chemo before Christmas and had her mastectomy on Friday.  Today she came home and I brought over dinner.  She's been so brave.  Hopefully now that the surgery is over and she's home resting she can recover and just go on with the rest of her life.  There are a lot of challenges in life and I am always grateful when I can help in a little way to make it easier.

Sledding

Noah, Travis, Ethan and Zach

 For our combined youth activity we planned to go sledding.  We have had a ton of rain and as luck would have it today was the only sunny one! Yay!  It's supposed to rain again tomorrow and the following days.

We packed 4 cars up with kids and drove up the mountain.  Unfortunately there was a chains required sign pretty soon after we spotted even a little snow so we had to make due with less than a lot.

Audrey and I

It worked out okay though.  There was a little snow, the kids sledded on it or sledded on icy patches of dirt:)  They had snow ball fights, hiked around, goofed off and were cheerful.

We brought a cooler with hot water and hot chocolate packets and cups so we were able to make a treat at the end and I think everyone enjoyed some outside, snowy(ish) play time.

 Brynn and Grace

 Madi and Hannah

12 Years Old!

 Grace is 12! Such an exciting birthday, she gets to be in young women now and she's been looking forward to that for awhile now!  We planned a fun party and invited all the beehives. We ended up with 8 girls, which is a perfect party number.

Grace wanted pizza and an ice cream bar.  She wanted to play games and watch a movie, so that's what we did. 

We played balloon blast, silly smash, "right, left, eat", dicecapades and wink assassin.

The girls hung out in Grace's room. Watched "9 Lives" and ate and played a lot. 

Happy Birthday Gracie!!

 Camille, Brynn, Mia (hiding behind B), Lilly, Grace, Ofelia, Makayla and Charlotte.

balloon blast: the girls put candy in a balloon (laffy taffy) and then blew it up and tied it to their ankles.  When everyone was ready they popped each other's balloons and took the candy.  The one with the last intact balloon was the "winner.

silly smash: we got ice cream cones and put them on the counter upside down.  Hiding in each one was either a piece of candy or a slip of paper with a silly task on it.  The girls took turns smashing one cone and either got to eat the candy or do the task. It was stuff like sing the abc's backwards or win three thumb wars.

right left eat: a game where each girl has 3 pieces of candy.  They roll a dice and if the dice says 1 they pass a piece to the rt, if it says 2 a piece to the left, 3 they eat a piece, 4-6 they put a piece in "save pile". The person with the last piece available for play is the winner, and they ate the candy so win win:)

wink assassin is like "mafia" and dicecapades is a favorite board game.

long day

I subbed 6th grade today.  I was looking forward to it because days in the older grades are usually pretty good days. but this one wasn't.  The kids were pretty chatty and disrespectful.  This is a huge issue I see in pre teens and teens, sometimes even younger; they value "diss-ing" and "roasting" and incompetence.  They think it's funny to not know things and to be mean and bully.  Not all to an extreme degree but many kids.  It's super frustrating and annoying.  This class was replete with little miscreants that were busy impressing each other with their posturing and stupidity.  What was even worse was the blatant racism I ran into, primarily between African American kids calling each other names.  When I told them it would not be tolerated one little girl said it was okay because it was her race.  I said that it was never okay, to which she indignantly replied that she was going to tell her teacher on me the next day for not letting her be herself.  I told her to go ahead, that I would also be telling her teacher. Sheesh!  Honestly it was a long day and I was surprised at the language they used and the what they thought was okay, I haven't run into that quite this bad before.

After school I had to stop by the HS and fill out forms so E can be on the tennis team. Then I picked up Lu from robotics and took her to audition for the Antelope Valley Children's Choir, which she made!  Then back to the HS to pick up E from tennis try-outs.  Then back to the choir for the parent meeting. Then finally home where Hannah was making a delicious dinner.  Thai basil chicken.  It was so yummy!!

Grace finished her project.  It looks great. Dinner was great and it's my favorite night of TV (NCIS is on and it's a new one) so even a bad day can end well :)

MLK

 Yesterday after church Rob and I took Z on a walk on the aquaduct.  The weather was beautiful.  The kids didn't want to come so we had a nice long walk and talk alone.

Hannah picked these pretty flowers and put them in her hair. One nice thing about a moderate climate is the abundance of things that can grow year round.

The elders came over for dinner.  Ethan wanted us to make trash nachos and they were really good.  We also had enchiladas and smore brownies.

We got to talk to Clayton and Jenna for a long time.  He is healing really well.  This morning a cute picture of Jenna and Hannah popped up on my fb.  I sent it to J and she sent one back that she found this weekend too.  Grace has grown a lot.  Wow! J looks the same :)

 Today we had no school.  Yay!  We slept in.  Cleaned up.  Then the girls and I went shopping.

We left with the goal of getting some new church pants for Ethan as we noticed that his were way too short.  I thought we might try goodwill because he's growing so fast. Anyway they didn't have any but Hannah found several pairs of pants and Grace found a cute skirt and some mickey mouse pajamas.  I had to hem them and shorten the sleeves but now they are super cute!

Then Hannah remembered that she had a gift card to macy's so we went there and she got a pan and a pie keep on sale!! So fun. 

These are here dream pots.  And this is her pie keep :)

We did a lot of laundry and Grace worked on her project some more and we had FHE and apple pie.  Tomorrow it's back to school.

FHE